


It's Understood

by Lily_Padd_23



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Angst, Anyway I don't know what this is, Early Beatles, Early sixties, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Smut, a good bit of sex, a helping of angst, a touch of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:53:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23895616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Padd_23/pseuds/Lily_Padd_23
Summary: A weekend at Mendips that should have been like any other.
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 8
Kudos: 46





	It's Understood

**Author's Note:**

> Never posted in this fandom before. Never posted in RPF before. But all the obvious sentiments apply. I just project a LOT onto them, bless my poor gay heart. These poor lads. They never asked to be the dumping ground for my emotional baggage.

Summer of 1962

Paul woke up slowly that morning. The way one does without an alarm clock to answer to. Sleep dripped leisurely out of his limbs as he drifted back from a fast forgotten dream to the old mattress and the puffy duvet around him, the rest of his senses returning to the room before he even opened his eyes. Bathed in the languid light of a summer morning streaming through the wide window, he smiled softly as the familiar smell on the pillow that was pressed against his cheek reminded him exactly where he was. He was vaguely aware of some bumbling about the room, but he wasn’t quite yet awake enough not to be a bit surprised when he uncurled an arm into the space beside him and felt it empty.

It was then that he registered that all the pottering around was John, up before him and up to something. Unusual, for as reluctant as Paul was in the mornings, John was even more so. Paul let out a long exhale and furrowed deeper back against the pillows, not ready to surrender the last dregs of sleep. He was half inclined to mumble out a low and pouty _Johnny, come back to bed_ , ignoring the bolt of self-satisfaction in the knowledge of how effective that would be. But he found himself far too content, basking in the sunlight beaming through the windowpane and the warmth of John absently humming that Ruth Etting song. He chalked up the fleeting thought of wishing every morning could be like this to only being half awake.

Lazy minutes stretched out around them. He heard the door open and close a few times, John coming in and out of it, clamoring back and forth with increasingly poor attempts to be quiet for Paul. They had the place to themselves that weekend, so there was no one else for whom to be quiet. John finally stilled. Paul let a yawn take over his body, beginning to slowly unfurl against the mattress, but John gave a quick command, his voice foggy with morning, “No, no don’t move.”

Paul pried his eyes open, blinking back against the yellowed light from the window as he took John in where he was perched on the balls of his bare feet in a squat on a chair in front of his old easel with a palate and brush in hand, remnants from art school days.

“I’m gonna paint ye,” John explained. His auburn hair, haplessly ruffled, gleamed almost crimson in this particular lighting, the rosiness of his soft cheeks contrasting starkly with his cheekbones. His face was squinted in concentration behind his Buddy Holly glasses, the tip of his tongue ever so slightly parting his lips. He wore nothing but a pair of navy blue pajama flannels, and the shadows of the colored glass shapes on the window splashed against the creamy freckled skin of his upper shoulders. Unable to keep from staring, Paul felt his stomach flip so violently it made him lightheaded.

“What, I’m just supposed to stay here all morning like?” Paul asked.

“Mhmm,” John’s eyes didn’t leave the canvas as he dabbed his brush into a glob of paint.

“What if I’ve gotta take a leak?”

John tipped his head to look at him through his glasses, which were low on his angular nose, “You’ve gotta take a leak?” Paul didn’t, so he just narrowed his eyes, and John turned back to his easel insisting, “Then stay put, bastard.”

Paul huffed, but did as he was told. He was spread out in a position that shouldn’t have been as comfortable as it was, an arm tucked behind his head, twisted so that he was sort of on his back and side, the covers pulled up to his waist. On the one hand, being posed for John like this made him feel awkward and exposed. On the other hand, every time John looked at him with that level of intensity, it made his heart do a thousand different contortions behind his unclothed chest and sent dull electricity directly between his legs. He wondered if this is how the muses of great artists felt when they lay in bed to be rendered as gods and goddesses.

“You sleep alright, my love?” John asked swishing his brush in the cup of water he had propped on the arm of his chair.

“I did,” Paul replied, “ ‘cepting for some bloke who kept kicking me in the middle of the night.”

“Hmm,” John didn’t look up at him, but a dimple flashed as he said, “That’s funny because there was a fellow in my bed who wouldn’t stop snoring no matter how many times I kicked him.”

Last night had been fun. It had reminded Paul of the beginning. Their first time messing around together, he’d been barely seventeen, and they’d laughed until their faces hurt. He’d slept with plenty of birds, but he’d been too focused on doing the right thing, on what to do with his hands, and where to put his mouth to be able to really enjoy himself. From the moment their lips first touched, something was just different with John. It didn’t feel like a performance. Well, not in the sense that he was being assessed by an audience. It did feel like a show in the sense that he was able to let go, to feel the rhythm in and around him, to make music with his best friend. After they finished that first time, squished together and breathlessly trying to keep quiet in Paul’s bed, John’s teasing had been full of adoration when Paul, covered in sweat and John’s bite marks, had burst into a fit of tearful laughter, softly babbling, “I’ve been waiting and waiting for it to be _fun.”_

Now, not two months into being twenty, he still had the best sex of his life when he was with John. But lately, they’d had to make do with getting each other off wherever and whenever they could find the time and privacy rather than the giddy romps they’d had as kids or the champagne-soaked lovemaking they’d had in Paris. Paul had lost track of how many weeks it had been since they had a whole weekend ahead of them. He’d missed it. Last night, they’d been able to take their time. They’d been able to be loud. He’d come, red-faced and grinning, with John laughing so hard he’d swallowed down the wrong way, which only made them laugh more. They’d caught each other’s gaze for a few too many long seconds for it to be anything other than an acknowledgement of how much they’d needed this.

Once they’d caught their breath and made a pretense of cleaning themselves, they’d made their way downstairs to Mimi’s stuffy sofa in the living room. They’d wrapped up around each other in front of a Frank Capra movie with a couple of bottles of scotch. John had fallen asleep on Paul’s shoulder. Paul had tucked in his chin to be able to look down at him, the gentle fan of eyelashes, the soft puffs of breath from his slightly parted lips.

Paul truly had been lost in the depths of his own nostalgia because all he’d thought about was their first time: how they’d lost track of whose limbs were whose when they tangled together for sleep, nose-to-nose on the pillow; how John had whispered _as the actress said to the bishop_ jokes and covered Paul’s brow with smatterings of teeny kisses to coax crinkly little laughs from him, the kind that made John call him bunny; how Paul had woken up on three separate occasions throughout the night to find John wide awake and watching him with awestruck eyes like he had been looking through a telescope to the furthest, deepest corners of the galaxy. In this moment in Mendips, this Friday night that should have been like any other, with Mid Atlantic accents blasting in the background and a summer moon casting silvery shadows across the floor, liquor still oozing through his system, Paul was tempted to flick off the television set and just watch John sleep all night. But as he’d started to get up, John had let out a little mumble and stirred, rubbed the nap from his face before quickly attacking Paul with enough fervor to instigate round two.

Paul suddenly found himself wondering if John was going to paint the hair under his arms. He didn’t think he’d ever seen armpit hair in any of the classics.

For the next hour or so, Paul nodded in and out of a very shallow sleep. Each time Paul opened his eyes, John was still painting away. Paul dreamily wished he could paint John painting him. But he eventually determined it would take a far greater talent to capture just how perfectly exquisite and strikingly simple John’s beauty was in this lingering moment.

The fourth or fifth time Paul woke back up, John had set down his brush and his palette and was looking at him with pupils blown black and wanting.

“Well, good morning to you, too,” Paul stretched both arms above his head and cocked an eyebrow. John dropped to his feet and scampered over to the bed, throwing a leg on either side of Paul’s torso, crashing them together into a long, closed-mouth kiss. Paul moaned and let his hands fall to John’s back, his blood coursing hotly as he felt hard evidence of John’s arousal through the covers.

“You’re gonna hate me for this,” Paul muttered against John’s neck when they broke apart.

“Wha?” John gasped.

“I have to take a leak now.”

John responded with a petulant groan, dragging himself off of Paul’s chest with sleepy, syrupy resistance. Lightly chuckling, Paul hopped off the bed and out the door, smiling at the helpless sound John made upon seeing his bare ass and legs as he strode to the toilet. He sat down, having endured too many lectures from Mimi about leaving the seat up, and let his eyes fall about the powder room to all the little bits and pieces of John’s same old routine: his washcloth hanging on the sink basin, his toothbrush and wrung out tube of Colgate, his safety razor, the same aftershave he’d used for so long that smelled sharp and citrusy and a little like clean cotton laundry. He didn’t bother to fight the unexpected fond impulse to reach and run the sleeve of John’s tatty indigo robe between his fingers. In a moment of clarity so frighteningly vivid he would have sworn it was memory rather than imagination, he saw his own green and red plaid robe that hung on the back of his own bathroom door draped here on the empty hook beside John’s. At the thought, that quiet, omnipresent pain in the pit of his stomach threatened to flood up his sternum and tighten his chest, hinting at an unnamed emotion that he pointedly didn’t pin as longing.

But they’d had that conversation before. Not really. They’d had all the conversations _around_ that conversation. Paul aspired to eventual domesticity. John did not. John, in spite of himself, had increasingly common days where his inability to give a fuck about what society had to say outweighed his fear of not belonging and wanted to succumb to the temptation to walk down Lime Street wearing a sandwich board plastered with _Friend of Dorothy_ in big red letters. Paul did not.

That and they both wanted to be rock stars. No matter how many times they finagled their day dreams into anything other than this, that was the dead end from which they could not devise a way out. So this is what it had been and would always be: stolen weekends, lost kisses, teasing hands beneath tables, long looks from across the studio, flirting in plain sight masked as playful banter, an unspoken knowledge that regardless of how much time went by between trysts that there would always be another one and another one.

There had always been others, too, along the way. John, forever a bundle of contradictions, needed someone he could love out loud, and Paul was only human. But it was always understood, no matter who else they were with, that the others were the other women. Women who would always either feign oblivion, will themselves into a state of blissful ignorance, or play along because they had their own unsaid terms. Women who would all inevitably find being second (or third or fourth) fiddle tiresome and would move on. Bird after bird, day after day, year after year, John and Paul would still be this. Making plans for “us” and “we.” Never envisioning it ending. Never admitting that it would never be enough. 

If Paul let himself think about it for too long, which he rarely did, he’d realize that they were both asking each other for the same thing in different ways. They were just asking for a commitment. It’s just that John was asking for a commitment to _now,_ and Paul was asking for a commitment to the future. Neither one of them were ready to make that commitment. Which is why neither one of them ever asked for it out loud.

He went to scrub his hands and tugged on the robe, tying the belt loosely around his hips. The door shut behind him, and before he could make it back to John’s bedroom, he heard the kettle screeching from downstairs accompanied by John’s singsong, “Oh, Juliet?”

With a chuckle, Paul moved to the staircase in time to see John padding his way to the bottom of the steps, oven gloves on, glasses just losing the fog from the kettle, calling up to him “Coffee or tea, fairest Juliet?”

Paul clutched the banister with a flourish, “Wherefore art thou with my coffee, Romeo?”

“Soft,” John deadpanned, holding up the oven gloves with a flourished gesture, “What light through yonder bathrobe breaks!” Paul glanced down to see that the robe, in fact, had fallen open with his melodrama, and the two of them burst into giggles. Collecting himself, Paul folded the robe across his body in mock primness and retied it with a dignified tug. John merely raised an eyebrow at him and turned to make his way back to the kitchen, throwing “A pox on both our arses” flatly over his shoulder. Paul shuffled down the stairs with a snort, joining John in the kitchen as he poured the boiling water into the little metal coffee pot. Instinctively, Paul brushed beside him to grab two mugs, knowing each inch of this house as well as his childhood home.

He opened his mouth to make a comment about how well this suited them, but bit it back when he realized he didn’t like any of John’s probable responses. In the cloud of the coffee’s blossoming fragrance along with the warmth coming from the stove top and John’s shoulder so close to his, his skin suddenly prickled with an intense heat, and he felt his heart speed up. For a moment, he had just about made up his mind that he didn’t like what these weekends did to him and resolved to not let them happen anymore, when he felt rather than saw John’s gaze on his profile. The sheer _weight_ of it should have made him hotter, more on edge, more in need to splash cold water on his face, but instead, he just felt his pulse give a feeble little flutter before slowing back down to normal. His body cooled and stilled as he pulled his eyes away from the mugs he’d just set on the counter and let them meet John’s. Five goddamn years between them and still nothing could ground him like John could without even having to say a word. Hundreds of times, the John had proven the same was true of him, too.

“Pretty in pink, Paulie,” John quipped lightly, reaching a knuckle up to touch the flush of Paul’s cheek.

“A rose by any other name,” Paul batted his eyes and turned to the refrigerator to fetch the milk. John was whistling.

When Paul placed the little bottle of semi-skimmed on the counter by the mugs and scrounged around for the sugar bowl, John asked, “Haven’t we got Channel Island?”

“That’s all I saw, lad.” Paul replied. John grumbled something under his breath about Cyn and finishing all the gold top and how he was supposed to feel like a right asshole for drinking her last ginger beer. But Paul definitely wasn’t listening.

John poured their coffee, and Paul fixed it how they liked it, pausing to watch the way the teaspoon made milky circles that dissipated like cigarette smoke. He then turned and leaned his back against the counter, folding his right arm across his body to prop up his left elbow as he took a cautious sip. The mug was hot and clammy against his hand, fighting to balance out his body temperature against the cold from the kitchen tile under his bare toes.

“You wanna get some writing in today?” Paul asked, drumming his fingers against the mug. John didn’t answer, so Paul turned towards him. John had his side pressed against the counter and was studying his coffee cup with one of those sad, far-off looks he got. “Johnny?”

John snapped his head up at the sound of his name, “Hmm?” he started, but his brain caught up before Paul could repeat it, “Oh. No, I dunno. I got too much on my mind to write today.”

“That’s what the writing’s for, innit?” Paul poked the knob of John’s wrist. John shrugged and took a sip from his mug before setting it down on the counter and catching Paul’s hand in his own.

“Don’t feel much like writing,” he said, gently tugging Paul closer, “Maybe later.” Paul felt his eyes flutter and John pressed himself against Paul’s side, revealing what he _was_ in the mood for, and slipped a hand up the sleeve of the robe, fingers softly carding through the hair on his arm. Paul was practically purring by the time John’s lips were working their way up behind his ear.

“Mhm,” Paul let out a short puff of hair from his nose, “John…”

Paul closed his eyes and melted into him. With his eyes still lightly shut, he turned a fraction towards him, angling his chin up ever so slightly. Waiting to be kissed. The kiss tasted like morning. Like bad coffee and a good yawn. John’s mouth was peachy with soft stubble and warm from the coffee. With a hand still in the robe sleeve, John let his nails drag across Paul’s forearm, making him shudder. Something jumped in Paul’s belly as a tight, warm heat rose between his legs. When they pulled apart, they were smiling at each other, and John half-whispered, “Coffee needs to cool off anyroad.”

 _“You_ need to cool off anyroad,” Paul retorted, but he set his mug down and let himself be pulled to the couch. He fell back feeling a bit like a King on a throne as John pushed open Paul’s legs and dropped to his knees between them. With playful eyes, John began to trail kisses up Paul’s leg, and Paul involuntarily licked his lips. John stopped just below Paul’s groin to nibble at his inner thigh. That’s when everything went a bit misty. Paul hissed and flung his hands into John’s hair, wrapping silky strands of it around his fingers as John took him into his mouth.

“Oh fuck, oh god, oh John,” Paul spilled, his grip on John’s hair tightening. He guided John’s head up and down in easy bobbing motions, squirming beneath John’s mouth and releasing a litany of breathy, garbled, “Please, yes, fuck, oh god, oh god.” John quickly removed his glasses and tucked them on the floor beside him in order to take Paul’s entire length, pressing his face into Paul’s naval.

 _“Fuck!”_ Paul cried, simultaneously bucking upwards and jerking John’s hair so hard it made John give a startled chortle around him. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” But John just smiled against him and gave his calf a reassuring little squeeze. As John kept going, Paul was washed by the tender recollection of the first time John had sucked him off. He’d been able to tell right away that John had done it before, which they never really talked about. And it had been incredible. He’d known his way around the anatomy better than any bird. Paul had ended up quivering in the back of his car, so properly spent he couldn’t form words for a solid minute. The ecstasy of it made him all the more apologetic when it had been his turn a few weeks later, and he hadn’t the slightest notion of what he was doing. John had talked him through it dotingly, but they’d ended up just snogging in the bed until they got too sleepy. Paul had made up for it, though, in a hotel in Hamburg when he’d left John unable to walk straight for the next two days. Plus, practice makes perfect on all accounts.

John did something with his tongue that sent a spark up Paul’s spine, and his corresponding gasp warned him that this was going to be over before he wanted it to be if he didn’t intervene. He slurred out “John, _John,_ John,” hands grasping. John glanced up at him, but didn’t move his mouth. The sight made Paul want to cry. Urgently patting John’s shoulders with both hands, he managed, “Come ‘ead, come ‘ead, I wanna do the… with your… come ‘ead.”

They knew how to fill in each other’s blanks well enough by now that John pulled off enthusiastically, wiping his mouth and climbing up Paul. They used the momentum from a ferocious kiss to realign so Paul could lie back into the couch and collect John on his chest. It was all teeth and needy hands not knowing where to settle, and Paul automatically lifted his hips into John as he clumsily rid him of his flannels. With the desperation of a drowning man, Paul was able to burst away from John’s burning hot mouth, head tossed back against the arm of the couch, long enough to insist, “Turn around, turn around.” The following seconds were an uncoordinated mess of limbs flying ungracefully, knees and elbows crashing into each other uncomfortably, and muttering _just move your leg_ and _no that way_ and _you bastard_ and _I’m trying!_ and _oof_ unceremoniously. All the while laughing and cursing breathlessly.

John was finally able to lower himself back onto Paul’s face. Hungrily, Paul squeezed John’s sides and drew him closer until his nose was pressed hard against John’s tailbone. The moan that Paul’s lips at his entrance elicited from John vibrated through John’s mouth and around Paul, the heat of is sending shock waves from between Paul’s legs up into the pit of his stomach. For as graceless as getting here usually was, whenever they did this, it was always akin to sliding back into songwriting, so in tune with each other they could communicate what they were creating between them without any words. John’s long, lethargic sucks up and down in perfect rhythm as Paul kept time with steady beats of his tongue into him. As if finding the right chords, John’s fingers curled and uncurled against Paul’s restless thighs, their humming and moaning harmonizing and building together. John tasted like the most raw, most stirring, most feel-it-in-your-very-bones bass line Paul would ever play.

When John clenched and unclenched around his tongue, Paul came up for air and signaled to John with a soft tap on his upper thigh and a whispered, “Think you’re ready, love.” In another mad untangling, they found their way so Paul was sitting up, and John was straddling his lap, knees pressed into the back of the couch, hands cupping Paul’s cheeks to kiss the taste of himself on Paul’s face. They were panting when they drew apart, John red and sparkly as he nudged a piece of sweaty fringe from where it stuck to Paul’s damp brow with his thumb. Paul could only smile at him, mouth hanging open as he tried to catch his breath, nuzzling playfully against John’s palms. John’s hands dropped from Paul’s face to his broad shoulders, teasing the exposed skin between the folds of the robe with callused fingertips. Paul’s skin felt tight and sensitive against the soft fabric that John was spreading open, his eyes fluttering as John flattened his hands against the plane of his chest, which lifted and fell with heavy breaths, and just looked with a hazy, rapt expression. Meeting Paul’s eyes, John let out a grounding exhale from his nose. As if shifting gears, his look became hawk-like in its focus as he swallowed, unblinking. Paul grinned at him and lifted his left hand shakily.

“Yeah?” Paul mumbled softly, almost reverently as his fingers smoothed across John’s thin lips as though he were touching the most intricate glass.

“Yeah.”

Paul smiled and dipped two fingers into John’s mouth. John squeezed his eyes shut and pulled Paul’s fingers deeper as if to suck them empty like honeysuckles. He swirled his tongue, and Paul just watched, his heart in his throat. Everything John did was beautiful. The words were the only coherent thing in his cloudy mind: _so beautiful, so beautiful, so fucking beautiful, so beautiful._ Paul was alarmed when the broken record was jarred by the thought _how can he expect me to ever love anyone else?_

Once his fingers were sufficiently slick, Paul dragged them across John’s tongue and out of his mouth, moving his hand back and down. With a soft whimper, John rolled himself into a tight ball against Paul to grant better access to prep him, nestling his head into the crook of Paul’s neck. As he stretched John open with his left hand, Paul traced nonsense shapes soothingly up and down John’s thigh with his right.

“ ‘Atta boy,” he whispered into John’s hair when he felt John relax around him. He pecked the top of John’s head before pulling out and sitting up a bit more. “You good?”

John nodded. He lifted himself a bit and spit into the bowl of his hand before giving Paul a few quick tugs. Utterly done for, Paul couldn’t help the high-pitched cry he made when John finally sunk onto him. The polar opposite of John’s low, gravelly _Mmmmm._ Wrapped around each other, neither could move for a few deep breaths. Then, like cotenants beginning to collide, like instruments tuning up, John starting rocking against Paul, and they both grabbed each other tighter as they set their cadence. They wordlessly agreed that this was a slow song, patiently dragging out each movement, each thrust, each groan, each kiss, each touch, each sound for as long as they could stand and then some. Paul held John so close that the palms of his hands were flat against the space between his shoulder blades, their sweat-slick chests flush against each other but somehow pressing closer with each thrust. John’s fingers in the hair at the base of Paul’s neck, tugging gently, sending hot shivers racing through his veins and leaving goose bumps across his skin. Every time Paul hit his spot, John would pull his hair harder and give a wet, husky groan against Paul’s ear. A sound that made Paul positively unravel. Even as the pressure built and their pace quickened, they barely said a word but for a few murmurs of each other’s names.

With a strangled sound uttered into the crux of John’s neck, Paul finished first. A burst of stars exploded behind his eyes as he jerked up, practically weeping. Like the smoke cascading down the black sky after a fireworks display, all the sparks went out, and his fists unclenched as he collapsed. John gingerly pulled off and gave him a few moments to breathe as he slumped down into the cushions. The eye contact was enough to make Paul’s whole body maintain a faint buzz. John then sat up off his haunches and came to bracket Paul’s face with his thighs. As John grabbed hold of the back of the couch, Paul took him into his mouth. The taste of John hit his tongue like adrenaline, and Paul sucked him with rekindled zeal. Paul firmly anchored his hands on John’s sides, his thumbs pressing bruises into his hipbones. After a few tantalizingly slow drags down John’s shaft, Paul held his head still to let John rut into him as he needed. Pearly beads of sweat were collecting on John’s forehead. He had bit his lower lip between his teeth, and Paul watched as his face twisted in the blissful agony of being so close to the edge. Whenever John looked down, he’d breathe out _Fucking Christ_ , which made Paul go dizzy.

All at once, John let out a tortured _“Paaa-aaaul!”_ and came hard down his throat, crumpling forward for Paul to catch him. Swallowing sharply, Paul pulled John into him again, licking his lips and whispering into John’s hair, “Shhh shhh shhh, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

Paul didn’t think he’d ever have enough room to comprehend how huge and powerful and home he felt every time they came down from a climax together.

When he trusted his legs to be able to walk without buckling, he got up out from under John and helped him back into his flannels and glasses. They made another pot of coffee and then tumbled back up the stairs like rambunctious teenagers, mugs in hand, Paul’s thumb looped in the back of John’s waistband. The bedroom was a tight pinch with the clunky easel taking up nearly all the floor, but John placed his coffee mug on the desk and resumed his perch while Paul climbed back into bed.

“Which arm…?” Paul questioned, switching back and forth between leaning on his right and left arm, trying to remember which one he’d been resting against before. This prompted a little scoff from John who had a mischievous look in his eye when he said, “I know what you look like naked, Paulie.”

“Wha?!” Paul sputtered.

“I don’t have to look at you to see you,” John gave him a cheeky grin before turning back to the canvas.

“You mean…” Paul started, “I could’ve been moving about this whole time like?”

“I wanted to see how long I could get you to stay in one place,” John didn’t move his eyes from his painting but bit his lip knowing full well that Paul sat, robe hanging off his shoulders, with a ridiculous flustered expression, mouth dropped open, and eyebrows contorted.

“You’re a bona fide bastard, Winston.” Paul finally told him, sinking back down into the blankets and reaching for the cup of coffee he’d placed on the floor.

“That I am, James,” John said, “I’ve got me seal of authenticity and everything.” With the index finger of the hand holding his paintbrush, John tapped the strawberry-shaped patch of the purple-red hickey Paul had planted below his left collarbone the night before as though he were showing off a medal of honor.

“Watch yourself, son,” Paul retorted holding his mug to his lips.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll give you another one.” This made John throw his head back in a laugh, and Paul managed to take an unfazed sip of coffee despite a round smile burning behind his cheeks. John composed himself and returned to his painting, the aftershocks of little chuckles rolling from his chest now and then as Paul took long, pleasant sips of coffee. There was no one else in the world for whom Paul didn’t feel the need to fill extended silences. In fact, he relished the quiet times where they could be alone together without anything else, not even words, just them. These moments were becoming fewer and further between.

Once his mug was empty, he set it back down and sighed drowsily, tucking further against the pillows and just watching John paint. The silence had settled so comfortably, that they both turned their heads towards the window at the sound of a church bell in the distance chiming 11:00. John replied to it by humming the song from that new film _The Music Man_ they liked so much, _there were bells on a hill, but I never heard them ringing, no I never heard them at all..._ Paul joined in absentmindedly, improvising a harmony. _Till there was you._ John blinked a little taken aback, and they both laughed lightly, both knowing exactly what had happened; John hadn’t realized he’d been humming a melody until Paul started harmonizing. It happened a lot to both of them. John gave him a quick, knowing smile that made Paul’s heart skip a beat or two, then returned to his painting.

Paul looked on with stargazer eyes, a thumping in his chest like a bad drummer, all out of rhythm and speeding up. And like a music swell that only he could hear, something rose in his chest, so unprecedented and so huge: the words that had been on the tip of his tongue all weekend, the question they never asked for out loud on the cusp of overflowing into the room. It burned in the back of his throat like a shot of whiskey. He swallowed hard and licked his dry lips, his mind suddenly empty of all his usual excuses for not saying it, for not asking, when John abruptly broke the silence with “I knocked Cyn up.”

“Oh, come off it, John,” Paul snorted at first, but then when John didn’t laugh, he darted his eyes to see his face, still focused on the easel, without an ounce of humor in his flat expression, “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Paul’s heartbeat was in his ears. “Is she gonna…?”

“No.”

“So she’s gonna…?”

“Yeah.”

“Mmm.” Paul swallowed again as John moved his brush choppily, his still countenance not matching the short, aggressive strokes across the canvas. After a few beats of the blue paint, John added, “Told her I’d marry her.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Marry her,” John parroted.

“Oh,” the broken little crack in Paul’s voice was the first thing that made him register that he might be sad, “I thought we weren’t gonna do that.”

John finally ripped his attention from the easel, quickly jerking his brush away and dunking it with a frustrated sigh into the cup of rinse water. “Yeah, well, I’m gonna have to aren’t I?”

Paul watched him through glassy eyes as he squeezed his way between the chair and the desk, stopping to snatch a pack of cigarettes and a matchbook from a desk drawer and coming to plop on the foot of the bed. As John crossed his legs beneath himself and went to light up a cigarette between his lips, Paul noticed his hands were shaking. Wordlessly, Paul propped up and extended a hand to offer to light it for him. But John shifted to face away from him and tried a few more times before it finally sparked up and he could toss the packet and matches back on the desk. The tobacco was harsh and musty, and Paul’s face felt hot. For a split second, they were kids again, sitting on the curb on Forthlin Road in the sticky summer heat after John found out about Julia. Just two boys without a clue in the world of what to say.

John passed him the cigarette, and Paul sucked the smoke into his lungs like it was oxygen. He thought that maybe if he held his breath long enough, his body would remember how to breathe properly, like when one is drowning and finally comes up for air. He found himself coughing and sputtering out a shaky, “And are we…?”

John was looking at his own hands. The sun had moved in the sky and was glaring into the room now, casting John’s skin bright white like in over exposed photographs and drawing out dark, violet shadows under his eyes. In vain, Paul tried to conjure up visions of this John as a father. A baby would look so out of place on this John’s knee. There but for the grace of another long drag of the cigarette, Paul thought he might be sick.

Without looking at Paul, John answered quietly, “Still we.” He took off his glasses long enough to rub the heels of his palms against his eyes for a few long seconds before taking the cigarette from Paul and pressing it to his mouth. Paul couldn’t think of anything to say.

“You’re angry.” John posited after releasing a cloud of smoke.

“I’m not angry.”

“I think you’re angry.” John offered the cigarette to Paul who gave a short shake of his head, so John took one more inhale before reaching to snuff it out on a little white ash tray that was precariously balanced on the corner of the desk. Sitting up a little straighter, Paul yanked at the sleeves of the robe and said with arched brows, “I think _you’re_ angry, so you want me to be angry.”

“Why would I be angry?” John turned to him adjusting his weight to lean in closer to Paul, anchoring himself with elbows on Paul’s calves.

“I think…” Paul stubbornly chased a confusing train of thought, “You think _I_ think you owe me something.”

John’s eyes narrowed, processing the word tangle, before he whispered, “Don’t I?”

“No,” Paul insisted quietly, surprising himself with his own composure, “Not a thing. You never have.” He wanted to add something grand, something sweepingly romantic, something like _my love for you is not transactional,_ but John’s stare made him bashful before he could stammer out the words, so he settled for letting John kiss him instead. _There are no conditions,_ he thought as John’s tongue forged against his own, his hands going to his hair, his lips shooting stars all the way to his toenails, _No conditions, just me, just you, just this._ Paul let his left hand slide to the small of John’s back, dipping down beneath the waistband of his flannels to pull him into his lap. The anguished whimper that left John’s throat was interrupted by the sharp ring of the telephone piercing into the air from downstairs. They startled for a second, and John seemed game to ignore it, burrowing back for more, but Paul placed his free hand to John’s chest and whispered, “You should get that, love. Might be…” John sighed and pressed his forehead to Paul’s for a moment. Then, with a quick exhale, he darted up and out the door.

As the sounds of John’s footsteps hurried down the stairs, Paul sat up slowly, his mind and body moving as if through murky water. A lurch in his stomach told him he was about to throw up so he pushed his way out of the crammed room and flung himself to the toilet. White-knuckling the rim, he spent a minute or two coughing at the bowl, but nothing came. He stood up unsteadily to wash his hands, thinking quite suddenly of the first time he got blackout drunk. Most of what he remembered about that night was being bent over this very toilet John sitting on the floor with his back against the tub, alternating between watching with amusement, wiping Paul’s sick off his face, and sweet talking him into taking little bites of dry toast and sips of water. Between nibbles and wretches, all Paul had been able to do was moan, “I’m gonna _die.”_ To which John had responded, “You’re not gonna die unless I kill you.” But all the while, he rubbed little circles at the small of Paul’s back. Washing his hands, Paul saw someone in the mirror who looked different than that fifteen-year-old boy. But right now, he felt completely and painstakingly the same.

He moved back down the hall and to the bedroom, trying not to listen as John tried to maintain his upbeat disinterest on the phone for Cynthia, “Oh Paul? Paul’s Paul. That Clarke Gable picture was on the telly last night. Do you remember that Clarke Gable picture with Claudette Colbert? Yeah, that’s the one. How’s your belly? I know I know, I’m just _asking_ like.”

Pausing at the doorway, Paul took a deep breath, trying to decide if the ache in his stomach would be better addressed by collapsing back into the bed and sleeping for the rest of the day or going downstairs and making a late breakfast. Or day drinking. Before he could make up his mind, his feet were carrying him across the little room to the easel. He stood for a moment, taking in the colors of John’s painting, refraining from messing it up by reaching out and placing his finger tips to it. He felt his breath catch in his throat, and he had to fumble around for another cigarette as he sank into the chair.

At the bottom half of the canvas, the shadowy beginnings of a figure painting of Paul’s nude form in different shades of blue was lying back in a soft suggestion of a grassy meadow, a flower crown delicately draped across his dark hair, dipping across one of his downcast eyes. As they traveled up the canvas, the scattered wildflowers surrounding the figure dissolved into stars, the green grass blending into the pastel blues and pinks and purples of a spiraling solar system. Hanging like two bright moons in the sky was a pair of round eyes, shimmering with flecks of hazel and twinkling with love and wonder. It was only when he looked closer that Paul noticed the faint grey silhouette sitting in the grass behind him, back to the viewer, head tipped down in profile over the neck of a guitar to reveal a distinct nose, gaze directed over his shoulder at Paul’s face.

Without thinking, cigarette between his teeth, Paul picked up the brush and began to add to the unending expanse of stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make me a better writer.  
> Come talk to me on Tumblr at lilypadd23 or Twitter @Lily_Padd_23  
> Who knows if I'll ever post RPF again because frankly, I just want to hide behind my hands, but *shrugs in gay* quarantine makes people do a lot of stuff they didn't think they'd do. So we'll see.


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